My Last Confession
by AfroGeekGoddess
Summary: "You were my prism. My mirror. How could I see myself without you? Even if I had to shatter you to do it?" The inside of Sherlock's mind after the HEAR train car sequence-how he wants to explain himself to John.


**After watching the train car sequence in The Empty Hearse, and after reading Pennypaperbrain's Sherlock!POV fic about it, I wanted to write about that scene as well. Mostly as a way to wrap my mind around Sherlock's and understand his thoughts and emotions (though, not to condone his actions, which were so Not Good!).**

**Warnings for references to suicide, mild gore, emotional manipulation, self-loathing, violence.**

* * *

><p>You've seen the battlefield.<br>You know the rules:  
>lie, cheat, kill. Or die.<br>I was just playing the game.  
>There is so much grey on the battlefield.<br>Even with the laws of war.  
>You lived there: Afghanistan,<br>London. I was the grey for two years.

_I am you_, I told M on the roof.  
>He was my shadow twin. You are my negative space.<br>You fit in my hollows, in the spaces  
>I thought were so undefined until you fit into them perfectly.<p>

:

We are not good men.  
>We may want to be. We may pretend.<br>But I know you giggle after you kill,  
>you know the sound of my fists on flesh,<br>I know the feel of your hands on my throat,  
>you know the way my tongue draws blood.<p>

You were my prism. My mirror.  
>How could I see myself without you?<br>Even if I had to shatter you to do it?

:

I am not a (good) man.  
>I am instinct and lightning.<br>I am blood and death and _run_.  
>I am wildness and ruthless and a knife at a throat.<br>I am the instant decision,  
>I am the kill or be killed, I am <em>finish it any way necessary<em>.  
>I am <em>take the risk take the shot take flight<em>  
>take the opportunity no matter what the cost<br>and I sacrificed your soul because  
>I had nothing left to give, sacrificed you<br>to the gods of forgiveness so I could hear you say  
>perhaps, perhaps I may be redeemed.<br>I became Want. I was Need / Now / Dark / Desire.  
>Stripped of blood and flesh and brain down to my core,<br>no longer a proper noun.  
><em>Being Sherlock Holmes.<em>  
>I don't know what that means anymore<br>besides a wool coat and a bad hat  
>and the feel of you at my side<br>_(I could carry your best and wisest_  
>words like stones in my pockets).<p>

:

I didn't lie entirely. I killed myself on that roof.  
>The Sherlock Holmes you knew is dead.<br>I wear his sallow skin,  
>pretend it is smooth and new.<br>I am his ghost, trying to remember mortality.

:

Did I enjoy it? A holiday?  
>From boundaries, from limits? From you?<br>I didn't have to grow. Or face you  
>your disappointment  your questioning  
>your faith in me, as if I were Something Greater.<p>

I am not a god. Or not a smiling one.

:

I laughed at you. With you. Near you.  
>I almost forgot what that sounded like.<br>My laughter. Your shouting. Your anger—violin strings.  
>stretched and plucked to breaking.<p>

:

What I did, was not right. What I did, I needed. What I did, I wanted.  
><em>(because  because / because)  
><em>Anyone would tell you—everyone has told you—to run. Long, long ago.  
><em>(stay away from Sherlock Holmes)<em>  
>I told you to go. I told you to go. And still you stayed,<br>your splintered voice and fractured heart  
>and your faith somehow intact.<p>

You once were a broken bone, poorly healed. I broke you  
>again when we met, cracked your shattered places over and over<br>to reset you into what you (i) needed.

I forgot that fractures never fully heal.

:

This was always in me.  
>I told you long ago, I was never one of them.<br>_(heroic / ordinary / good)_  
>Even when you wanted me to be.<br>Even when I almost believed I could be.  
>I can't do it, John.<br>I don't know how.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The title is from Florence + The Machine's "Heavy In Your Arms" (which is also the song I had on repeat while writing). Thank you to Mirith Griffin and Pennypaperbrain for reviewing and critiquing this for me.<strong>


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